Inked Girl: Radeo

Stella McCartney jacket.

Inked Girl: Radeo

Twenty-one-year-old Radeo is petrified of needles—somewhat surprising, considering her plethora of tattoos. But really it just solidifies that she is “the biggest oxymoron on the planet.”

As a model coordinator for suicidegirls.com, Radeo splits her time between Los Angeles and Columbus, OH, and has clear ties to both cities. “I hustle like a West Coast girl but I’m a midwesterner at heart,” she says. While some of her hobbies are definitively tomboyish (like working on her ’66 Chevy Bel Air), she also collects vintage dresses and gorges on ice cream with her roommates.

“Sometimes you get looked at like you’re kinky and wild because you have tattoos, and that’s definitely not [my] case,” she says, describing how some unwanted admirers judge her looks. “I’m a lady and I’d like to be treated like one.”

But ask nicely and Radeo will gladly show off her ink, like the owl that represents her grandmother. Tiny details (the owl’s eye color is her grandmother’s birthstone) and the fact that it was done by her good friend, Indianapolis artist Jeramie Chittick, make it one of her current favorites. Chittick and artist Durb Morrison are responsible for most of the work on her back, stomach, and knuckles, and she’s lined them up to work on new pieces for her arms, ribs, and legs.

But maybe the best way to capture the contradictory personality of this self-proclaimed ice cream connoisseur is through (what else?) ice cream. Her dream flavor: sweet cream with fortune cookies and a soy sauce swirl. A little sweet, a little salty, yet somehow it all fits together, just like Radeo.